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I lost someone very close to me recently and in the process of writing a eulogy, I had cause to think. What if I died now, what would I regret most? Apart from the obvious, which include not being with my nearest and dearest, the next thing would be unfulfilled dreams. Dreams that centre around being a world renowned entrepreneur!!!!!! I look at Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and many others both living and dead and I wonder, how did they do it? I cannot tell you how many times I have dusted my resume and checked the vacancy ads. There are days that I have wondered about my sanity and why I would subject myself to all this hardship, then I remember my dream to make money doing something that will benefit my fellow human beings. But, people it is hard!!!!!!! It is hard being a start-up particularly one with very little money.
People patronise you, everyone becomes your advisor and they give you so many reasons why your business will not work. It has been real tough and I have thought of giving up so many times. Then something happens and you draw strength from that one singular occurence, enough to keep you going. I believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel, but only if we keep going. I know for sure that one day I will arrive at an entrepreneurial space I will be proud of.
However, in the event that I don’t quite make the cut, I would like to know that I gave it my best shot. I doubt if there is any regret in knowing that you tried your darned best. So to you my brothers and sisters in trade, I say don’t give up. Not even when people around you think you are crazy for doing what you do or you should go get a real job. You know why? Because for all those personalities we admire, it took a lot of hardwork, a lot of rejections and a lot of sleepless nights to get where they are.
The truth is, no matter how wonderful and smooth the journey seems in our dreams, success, usually, can be found amongst thorns and only the strong and prepared find it . Hardwork, focus, consistency dedication and peharps a bit of luck are all neccessary ingredients if you are to succeed. There are no shortcuts to real success and now even in my dreams I have made allowances for challenges and obstacles and ways of overcoming them because, lets face it real dreams are made of these.
March 7th, 2012
As a business owner, your role is to provide strategic guidance, leadership and vision for your business and when you find yourself unable to provide any of these, its time for a break. I have come across quite a few people whom, either through mental laziness or ‘environmental fatigue’ have left the responsibility of finding a vision for their business to their employees. How does that work?
No one can dream your dream better than you and no one can articulate your dream better than you. When your employees have to start dreaming on your behalf then it is no longer your dream and soon it will no longer be your business too.
I understand that the business environment can drive one mad and invariably lead to severe tiredness and an overhwelming desire to throw in the towel, hence the word ‘environmental fatigue’ but we must not give up. People have been known to survive, not just the ‘barely scraping by’ kind of survival, but the seriously doing well kind of survival. Truth is, if they can so can you.
So what do you need to do to keep going?
1. Visioning!!!!!! You must create a vision, verbalise it, internalise it and live it. This is the only thing that will keep you going when it appears everything else has conspired against you. You have to believe in it so much that you can almost taste it. A wise man (Janos Arany) said “in dreams and in love there are no impossibilities” and for as long as you can believe in that vision who dare disbelieve?
2. Get buy-in – Find people who are even worse dreamers than you and sell your vision to them, so that, in your low moments they can take up the dream and continue to run with it. ” You need men who can dream of things that never were” (John F. Kennedy). Its like a wrestling tag team, when one person is failing the other takes over. In entreprenuership you cannot run the race alone you need the right people.
3. Dreamers are great but you also need dreamers who can implement. It is no good if you all while away time in a dream filled haze. A dream does not become reality until somebody makes it happen.
4. Be structured in the way you run your business. No one wants to work in madness. People do better when they know for a fact that certain things are constant. Imagine how chaotic it will be not knowing if the sun will rise tomorrow or not. When your people are not sure what they will find everyime they turn up for work, it can be unsettling and unproductive.
5. Keep your promises to your people, it makes you a reliable leader. It is said that “Hope deffered makes a man sick but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life”. Do not create an environment of distrust, but one of equity, fairness and openness.
6. Communicate!!! when you don’t they will make up stories and you will not like what you hear. Besides you are all in this together and since you cannot do this by yourself, its time you start communicating.
7. Do unto others – I think this is the best quote in the whole wide world. What can be better? We tend to forget that we are all human beings and that chances are, what you would not like the next person is likely not to like it too, no matter how lowly their station in life. They might tolerate it because they have no choice, but once they have a choice, Speedy Gonzales will have nothing on them.
Ok! I know what you are thinking, this is really hard! Yep it is! But who said that running a business would be easy? Certainly not me! If anything I warned you! ( see the “Life of the Entrepreneur”).
To summarise, this is a factual statement from another wise man – ”No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities- always see them, for they’re always there.” (Norman Vincent Peale) I love wise men and women don’t you?
Look you already took the plunge and you have expended all this time and energy, there’s really no going back. So grit your teeth, pull up your socks and get on with it.
Enough of this dream transference nonsense and on with some serious visioning…… that’s the spirit of entrepreneurship.
October 12th, 2011
The need for survival drives us to be creative but that “je ne sais quoi” keeps us from doing things right. Our counterpart in the foreign climes hits upon an idea and he/she spends a lot of time thinking of ways to continuously improve on it and get better at it. Before you know it a huge conglomerate worth billions of dollars is born and he is setting up in Africa.
Continue Reading February 1st, 2011
I grew up in a relatively small town in the Eastern part of Nigeria and I remember how idyllic and normal things were at the time. We derived so much joy from the simplest things, be it riding our bikes round the quiet streets, visiting the sports club or going with my mum to the washer man’s. Washing machines were not common then and so we had this lovely man whom we entrusted our ‘heavy duty’ washing to.
I remember so well the street where he lived and still lives and the big basins of clothes soaking in ‘omo’, with the rows and rows of colourful attires drying in the sun. You carried your clothes into his office which was also his home and the clothes were counted and the reciept handed over with a collection date. All the clothes were hand washed and ironed without any appliance as we know them today other than a coal iron for when ‘NEPA’ took the light and the regular electirc iron. This same room was converted into a bedroom at night for his wife and children.
Why am I remembering Mr. ‘Washerman’ today, more than 20 years later? Because my mum came to visit recently and she carried with her the trademark washerman package of a neatly ironed outfit wrapped in ‘waterproof’ and I was amazed to find that he was still very much around and still washing clothes. Even more impressive is that his kids are grown and are almost all out of University raised on that income brought in from washing clothes. Long Live the small business owner!!
I couldn’t help but wonder what his plans for ensuring that the business continues when he is too old to continue? My mum was happy to inform me that those children who have graduated were working in various corporate organisations and were certainly not going to be washing clothes for a living. I wondered about this and I realised that this is the story of so many small businesses. They work so hard for years on end and at the end of the day they have nothing tangible to show for it as the business fades into oblivion once the owner is incapacitated or dead.
What is wrong with washing clothes for a living? After all my Mr. Washerman raised 4 or 5 children on his business. He built a customer base who have remained loyal to him for over 30 years and he has made a name for himself in a small town. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that this is exactly what I am trying to do with SME’s.. get them to see the potential in their business.
Picture this…..
Imagine if Mr. Washerman had seen this business as a little more than, something to pay the bills with? Imagine if he had seen the potential inherent in the opportunities presented to him over the years and had taken advantage of them? He could have rented a small place, bought one washing machine and increased the capacity of his washes. He could have charged more for handwashed clothes and less for machine washed ones.
As the business grew he could have bought more machines, opened new branches in different parts of town and perhaps invested in one or two vans to pick up and drop washing from homes and offices. He could have even included dry cleaning sevices. Perhaps if he had done that his son, instead of pounding the streets looking for work, would have taken over as Managing Director and Mr. Washerman would have retired secure in the fact that he had built a business that would outlive him.
Unfortunately this was not meant to be, maybe because he did not have anyone to show him the possibilities or because he had no time to sit and think when school fees and unpaid bills were staring him in the face or maybe he just wanted his business to remain the way it has always been. I dont know….what I do know is that a number of us get opportunities like this and we never even realise what we have.
We go into business, because we want to pay the bills, or we are bored and need something to keep us busy, or we have a talent or hobby we use as a time filler and we do not realise that we are sitting on a potentially huge thing. We even pray and plead that God should show us the way to make ‘mega bucks’ and we fail to see that he has answered our prayers but we just have not realised it.
Have you given any thought to what will happen to your business when you are too old to work or in the event that you are incapacitated and can’t work? What happens then? You need structures if your business will outlive you, and, if you are running a business where everything stops when you are away, then my friend you need our help.
For all those who actually know what they want and have no clue how to go about it or how to move to the next level, you are in the right place. Let’s talk.
In the mean time, lets hear it for my dear Mr. Washerman, the unsung hero, who through hardwork, determination and sheer will to survive ran a small business for 30 odd years and raised 4 or 5 children without any help from anyone. I can bet that his bank manager never gave him 10 kobo neither did NEPA or the water corporation do him any favours.
To all the other ‘washer men’ and ‘women’, small business owners, scattered all over this great nation of ours who through hardwork, perseverance and the will to survive consistently defy the odds and miraculously live to tell the story, here’s to you.
March 16th, 2009
Most times I wonder what I am doing running my own business and I ask my poor long suffering husband for the hundredth time ‘is it too late to find a job?’ The life of an entrepreneur is one of constant responsibility that never goes away. It starts with the end of the month when you have bills to pay and then you move on to the beginning of a new month when you have to make sure that the plans you have put into place are actually implemented at least enough to make sure that you have money to pay the bills which will surely come up again at the end of another month.
You worry about the people you have employed and their ability to deliver and you wonder if the equipments you have bought will keep up their end of the bargain……. and it is at that point when the clock is about to strike 2 in the a.m that you punch the pillow for the umpteenth time and ask yourself once again is it really worth it?
So is it really worth it? I think yes because it is your business and you need not attend one more board meeting where the chairman of the board is looking at you and trying to understand why his bank account has not swelled to bursting point after all the money he put in.
I also think yes when I know I can pop out to check up on my ailing daughter without any one scowling at me and staring pointedly at their watch.
I know for certain when a smiling client says ‘thank you very much, I couldn’t have done it without you’. That’s when the sleepless night and the unpaid bills stop being liabilities and become one more obstacle to conquer.
So what am I saying? I am saying that owning your own business gives you freedom and the opportunity to be your own boss, it also comes with some hefty responsibilities the least of which is understanding that people’s livelihood depends on you. To succeed you must first go into it for the right reasons and not because you want to be your own boss and/or make tons of money. You should go into it because you have something to offer people that they will be willing to pay you for. Without that I tell you, hunger and unpaid bills will come knocking. You had better understand that you will have to work harder than you have ever done in your life especially if you are a woman like me, trying to juggle work and a budding new family.
The difference between a successful businessman or woman and a failure is the determination to succeed and the realisation that it will get rougher and harder before it gets better. You must also be prepared, they say that luck favours the prepared mind (I think that’s what they say, anyway). You really don’t want the kind of organisation where if you are not there nothing works, certainly not if you plan to go on vacation twice a year like me…. when the money comes. Believe in what you do, which is why you must be sure that you have something to offer that people need.
So how do you build a solid organisation that your children will be happy to inherit or sell for a fortune as the case may be? Have a vision, focus on the goal, put in place structures, have systems that work, be flexible enough to know when to go back to the drawing board when the plan is not working. Need any help? Get in touch (info@senceworld.com) and we will help you achieve your goals. We have been there and are still on our path to a glorious future, so we understand what you are going through.
In the meantime, don’t give up there is light at the end of the tunnel and really… you are not alone.
March 10th, 2009
